The New Testament and the Seventh Day Sabbath
1-Jesus kept the seventh day all His life (Luke 4:16; John 15:10).
2-The New Testament declares that the seventh day is the Lord’s Day (Revelation 1:10; Mark 2:28.). It was made for man (Mark 2:27)
3-Jesus was Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2:28). He severely condemned the Pharisees as hypocrites for pretending to love God, while at the same time they made void one of the Ten Commandments by their tradition (Matthew 15:9).
4-The Son of God vindicated the Sabbath as a merciful institution made for man’s good (Mark 2:23-28.)
5-Jesus expressly declared that He had not come to destroy the law. “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets” (Matthew 5:17). Instead of abolishing the Sabbath, He taught how it should be observed (Matthew 12:1-13.)
6-He taught His disciples that they should do nothing upon the Sabbath day but what was “lawful” (Matthew 12:12).
7-He instructed His apostles that the Sabbath would be kept forty years after His resurrection (Matthew 24:20).
8-The pious women who had been with Jesus carefully kept the seventh day after His death (Luke 23:56).
9-Thirty years after Christ’s resurrection, the Holy Spirit’ expressly calls it “the Sabbath day” (Acts 13:14.)
10-The Sabbath day didn’t cease by the resurrection of Christ. Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, called it the “Sabbath day” in A.D. 45 (Acts 13:27.)
11-Luke, writing as late as A.D. 62, calls it the “Sabbath day” (Acts 13:44).
12-The Gentile Christians called it the Sabbath (Acts 13:42).
13-In the great Jerusalem Council, A.D. 49, in the attendance of the apostles and thousands of disciples, James calls it the “sabbath day” (Acts 15:21).
14-It was customary to hold prayer meetings upon that day (Acts 16:13).
15-It was Paul’s custom to preach and hold public meetings upon that day (Acts 17:2,3).
16-The Book of Acts alone gives a record of Paul’s holding eighty-four meetings upon that day (Acts 13:14, 44; 16:13; 17:2; 18:4,11).
17-There was never any argument between the Christians and the Jews about the Sabbath day. This is evidence that the believers still kept the same day that the Jews did.
18-In all their accusations against Paul, the Jews never accused him with disregarding the Sabbath day. And this is because he observed God’s fourth commandment (Exodus 20:8-11).
19-Paul declared that he had kept the law: “Neither against the law of the Jews, neither against the temple, nor yet against Caesar, have I offended any thing at all” (Acts 25:8).
20-The Sabbath is mentioned in the New Testament fifty-nine times, and always with respect, having the same title as it had in the Old Testament, which is “the Sabbath day.”
21-The Sabbath(s) that were abolished are the annual, ceremonial sabbaths that were “a shadow of things to come” (Colossians 2:14-17; Ephesians 2:15) and not the seventh day Sabbath. There were seven yearly holy days, or festivals, in ancient Israel that were also called sabbaths (Leviticus 23). These were in addition to, or “besides the Sabbaths of the Lord” (Leviticus 23:38), or seventh-day Sabbath. Their main importance was in foreshadowing, or pointing to, the cross and these ended at the cross. God’s seventh-day Sabbath was made before Adam’s sin, and therefore could foreshadow nothing about deliverance from sin. That’s why Colossians 2 differentiates and specifically mentions the sabbaths that were “a shadow.”
22-There is no mention anywhere in the New Testament about the seventh day Sabbath as being abolished, done away, or changed. “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God” (Hebrew 4:9). The keeping of Sunday is merely a man made tradition.
In His service,
BibleAsk Team
